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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29216808">Nostalgia is the littlest grief</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/StarOverHeaven/pseuds/StarOverHeaven'>StarOverHeaven</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Do not post to another site, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Older Sibling Wilbur Soot, Phil might also help who knows?, Post-War, Protective Wilbur Soot, Scars, Toby Smith | Tubbo Angst, Tubbo grieving his brother, Wilbur &amp; Sam actively working together to fix these traumatized kids, Wilbur / Sam / Phil have a dad friend alliance dont @ me, adopting a traumatized kid and having a 'we'll work through this together' arc supremacy, dream smp is like build a bear, except its just adopting traumatized kids instead</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 07:02:15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,778</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29216808</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/StarOverHeaven/pseuds/StarOverHeaven</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Tubbo thinks about things.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>79</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Nostalgia is the littlest grief</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
If anyone ever asked, Tubbo would say he'd been happy. And he was, once! It was just... a long time ago.
</p>
<p>
If anyone ever asked, he would smile. "Of course he's my friend!" Tubbo would say, his heart constricting in his chest at the idea that Tommy didn't think of him as one. He carefully wouldn't think about Tommy's face as he was exiled right after they'd gone to war to get the country back. Didn’t think about a pillar, and the cracked compass that spun endlessly, unanchored as it told Tubbo that he’d failed his best friend.
</p>
<p>
If anyone ever asked, they would receive a raised eyebrow and half a grin, like a secret shared. “Of course, I’ll get right on it!” He would say, as his heart dies in his chest and his bones ache with exhaustion. As he thinks of Wilbur, who had always seemed so tired when he was president, a happy facade that nobody saw through. As he thinks of Schlatt, burying the workload in liquor to soothe the headaches of a thousand tasks.
</p>
<p>
If anyone ever asked, Tubbo would nod. "Wilbur was pretty terrible, yeah." He would say, and he'd think of when Wilbur travelled with them with laughter and songs on his lips, the Wilbur who carried their bags when they complained too much. The Wilbur who was eager to teach Tubbo what he knew about music whenever Tubbo asked. He would carefully not think about Wilbur's distance when he was president, the way his shoulders had tightened and stress had formed dark circles under his eyes while Tubbo didn't notice at all. He carefully didn't think of Wilbur's wild eyes, more mania from grief than mania from true madness.
</p>
<p>
If anyone ever asked, he would force a smile. “Yeah, I’m doing fine! What about you?” He would say, and pretend to be happy for people when they said they were doing just fine, that they were happy. Stuffing away the anger that burned deep inside him, the loneliness that Tommy couldn’t soothe. The emptiness that ached for the people he’d seen as role models - the part of him that wished Wilbur was there to teach him how to handle the workload, the part of him that wanted Phil to visit with a smile, the part of him that wanted Techno to see the community he’d made and be happy for him instead of upset.
</p>
<p>
Nobody really asks, at least not a lot. Tubbo is happy about that, sometimes. It means he can’t be reminded, and when the scars across his body burn with phantom pain and his hands shake from nerves he can distract himself by focusing on other things.
</p>
<p>
Snowchester is different from L’manberg. Nobody asks him for much of anything, except to borrow stuff. Jack is always there, a friend in a warm coat to keep him company when the snow is a bit too thick and they have to clear the field for the potatoes again. A friend who doesn’t judge him when Tubbo makes a vault with Ranboo’s help one day, some part of him soothed by the familiarity of a place with supplies.
</p>
<p>
Tubbo knows he’s messed up. He knows it because he’s reminded of it whenever he catches sight of himself in the glass and his scars sting with remembered sparks. He knows it by how his hands shake uncontrollably when something is a bit too loud or a creeper goes off a bit too close because Jack wasn’t paying attention.
</p>
<p>
Days passed, and his frenzy doesn’t stop. He works endlessly to replace the armor he lost to Dream, anxiety pulled tight in his lungs at the thought of being in anything less than a fully enchanted diamond set. He doesn’t even have an axe or sword, now - everything is gone.
</p>
<p>
The Vault sits, and the armor Tommy gave him that he got from Dream stands guard. Every time Tubbo enters it, he feels anxiety pull the muscles in his back tighter. It’s decommissioned, but the blood Dream had spilt wearing it seems to linger in the room like a dark cast. Even just being near it makes the hairs on his arms stand up, some instinctive sort of fear born from times of war when he’d seen Dream launching himself into the battle wearing the same armor.
</p>
<p>
He thinks of Tommy, fierce as a whirlwind and with a grin full of braces and fire. How he would jump into the front lines without a second thought, fearless regardless of the fact he’d fought a war with one life beside Tubbo as though he’d had three. There was no time for caution with Tommy. Tubbo thinks of Tommy, and thinks of a tornado on the horizon - wind that blew gently stirred into a frenzy, a tornado that had caught fire and burnt everything in its wake yet somehow the ashes always grew green.
</p>
<p>
He thinks of Wilbur, armorless yet somehow just as terrifying as Dream was. His voice in battle, loud and clear and focused as he rained arrows on the enemy. As he directed them all, pointed to the enemy and jumped into a fray of armor and enchanted swords as eagerly as a hound to bone, fragile as glass yet just as sharp. Wilbur is like a tsunami - sudden and fierce, leaving ruin in his wake and stains of what he’d been on everything the water had touched. He’s a fuse, lit far and set to blow in such a long time that no one sees it coming.
</p>
<p>
He thinks of Techno, who wears his armor like a second skin with half-lidded eyes and blood dripping from his sword, crossbow at his side. Techno is a one man army, unforgiving and brutal with the skill of a thousand men. He cuts and leaves trails of shattered bone and sliced armor, devastation in his wake like a wildfire. Sudden and quick, consuming everything in its path without regard for what it is or was.
</p>
<p>
Phil, too, is a natural disaster contained into a humanoid shape. If Tommy is a tornado, Phil is a hurricane - a deadly force that encroaches slowly, unstoppable as the tides. Even with his wings ruined and ashy, he seems to travel faster than the wind itself. A bird of prey diving, sharp and cutting and unpredictable as the wind he seemed to wield. If Techno was a one man army, Phil was a king - cold eyes and required costs, sand pouring from his fingertips turning to ash.
</p>
<p>
Tubbo knows them all. They’re family, to him. So he knows that in comparison he seems quite small, a background character in a series of natural disasters that no one can combat. 
</p>
<p>
Even Dream, in a way, tried to be what they had been. But unlike Techno, unlike Phil and Tommy and Wilbur, Dream was <em>temporary -</em> a pittance in comparison. A man trying to play god on a chess board he didn't even own.
</p>
<p>
But Tubbo thinks, now, that he is not so different from them as he thought he was. He thinks of the nukes he holds in his silos, and the devastation he’d wrung from the earth when he’d fired one. The way bedrock had shown in the scar of the earth he’d made, the way Tommy had coughed blood and waved it off after he’d visited the nuclear test site.
</p>
<p>
He thinks of Tommy, once fierce and protected by Wilbur standing behind him. If Tommy is a child, then Wilbur was a dragon protecting him as fiercely as a mother would protect her egg. Protected and kept away from the side effects of his actions, aware of the burnt places he left behind but unable to face his own destructive nature.
</p>
<p>
Then Wilbur had fallen, wings broken and fire gone, bloodied and killed by his own father with a smile on his face, and Tommy had been alone. Tubbo hadn’t kept an eye on him like Wilbur had always done, and he hadn’t been able to protect Tommy from the consequences. Hadn’t been able to keep him safe, had instead dedicated himself to protecting who he could and exiled his best friend to the dark loneliness of a distant land that nobody knew.
</p>
<p>
He had lived, heart cracked and broken. Papers were signed, ink pots were replaced, quills broken from overuse. Ghostbur arrived, a hollow thing of Wilbur that was both the same and yet an entirely different person. A compass in his hands, precious to Tubbo in a way no object before had been. It had hummed in his hands, a comfort he hadn’t known he’d needed until then.
</p>
<p>
Somehow, Wilbur had always managed to comfort his brothers even when he was barely a sliver of the person he’d been. Even when he faded from exhaustion, disappearing with tired eyes for a “nap” for weeks on end.
</p>
<p>
Tubbo thinks of Tommy, whose eyes had dulled with exile when he’d visited him that one time when Tommy was cutting trees. Then he thinks of the Tommy who’d stood beside Techno in a cloak of red wool and white trim, eyes a dark blue like the frigid oceans of the north. Who had wielded a blade beside Techno who wasn’t a brother but still was one, a soldier who’d never learned how not to be one standing beside a general who’d only known war.
</p>
<p>
Tubbo had always thought Tommy was never really like Wilbur, not at heart - he was more like Techno, except the ferocity of his heart had not been dedicated to anarchy but to his country, his friends, his family - but maybe not so much his family anymore. It shouldn’t have been a surprise to see him beside Techno, all narrowed eyes and netherite.
</p>
<p>
It wouldn’t have been one, at least he hoped so, if Tubbo hadn’t thought him dead at the time.
</p>
<p>
Tubbo had always thought he was like Wilbur, in a way. He tried to be like him when he was younger, inspired by the sight of Wilbur in his uniform standing against Dream. Like a mortal facing down a god, eyes narrows and words on his lips as he stood between those he protected and the army on the other side of the walls. 
</p>
<p>
Wilbur had been calm, an eye of any fierce storm that tried to waver them. Like a lighthouse, he’d stood tall. Like a great protector, he’d held them all under his wings when the wind blew too strongly, braved flame and fire and went to war armorless and exhausted to the bone to fight alongside those he loved.
</p>
<p>
He went into line of fire to draw arrows from the people who followed him, a general with a backbone stronger than bedrock to the eyes of Tubbo, who’d been too young at the time to imagine Wilbur as anything but unstoppable. Wilbur had basically raised him and Tommy, and seemed immortal, unphased by the dangers and protective of them both. 
</p>
<p>
Tubbo hadn’t known it, then. Hadn’t realized that despite his acting skills and the facade he showed, Wilbur was strained under the pressure. Didn’t know how heavily Eret’s betrayal weighed on the older man, his role model.
</p>
<p>
He can’t remember the exact point he stopped seeing Wilbur as untouchable. Can’t remember the exact point he no longer saw his older adoptive brother as a role model, but an enemy.
</p>
<p>
Pogtopia lingers in his mind, a crack in the earth as dark as the one in Wilbur’s head. He should have done more, helped more. Wilbur had stayed for him, for Niki, for those they’d left behind in Manburg. He’d stayed because he wanted them to be safe and Tommy wanted to get L’manberg back, and he’d rotted in that hole in the floor and nobody had noticed.
</p>
<p>
Tubbo was supposed to be a spy. Was supposed to be observant.
</p>
<p>
How hadn’t he noticed? Why hadn’t he helped?
</p>
<p>
It’s a regret that lingers with him, just another bloodied stain on his skin like all the other scars and terrible thoughts he had. Amidst the self doubt and the terror of a child who hadn’t known anything but war. A child who had no role model, who had nobody to go to for help but <em>Quackity, </em>and then <em>Jack,</em> and who now felt as though he had no one at all.
</p>
<p>
He missed Phil. Misses the warm nights curled under Phil’s wings with Tommy. Warm smiles and bandages around scratches, hot meals and blankets. Missed the nights around the campfires when they went camping. Hot cocoa in a warm room, days spent travelling to the sound of Wilbur strumming his guitar and Techno grumbling about Tommy stealing his pillow last night. He missed the days before Tommy set out alone, and Tubbo had followed him with Wilbur to keep his chaos in check.
</p>
<p>
He misses Wilbur, the one who always seemed to know what to do when times got tough. His older brother who’d gone distant because of the presidency, whose stupefied face when Tubbo told him a joke always made Tubbo laugh. Who was dead and gone, a memory of a diamond sword piercing his chest haunting Tubbo’s nightmares as regularly as white blue and red did in the nights when thunder rumbled outside his window.
</p>
<p>
He misses Ranboo, who had looked at their declaration of independence with a strange sort of focus and hadn’t really visited all that much since. Whose voice was comforting when Tubbo needed to get himself out of the memories of darker times, who hadn’t seen Tubbo die horribly and who didn’t pity Tubbo’s scars.
</p>
<p>
He misses Tommy, who barely visits because he’s too busy working with Sam on a big new project. Who didn’t even stop to greet him when he went to Snowchester with Niki to get spruce wood during the day they’d tested the nukes, who’d laughed off the possibility of him and Niki dying from the detonation with a grin. Like Tubbo hadn’t nearly <em>killed him that day -</em>
</p>
<p>
The nukes sit, deadly and dangerous and decommissioned, in the silo. He thinks of how Foolish asked if they were fireworks, and swallows thickly.
</p>
<p>
The snow is cold today.
</p>
<p>
Tubbo bundles his coat a little tighter, pulls his hand from his mitten to shove it against the scar on his face to numb the ghost-pain tingling there with a real sensation, rubbing at it unhappily. He’d been woken by the pain today, and that always was a sign of a bad day to come.
</p>
<p>
<em>Healing is slow, </em>he remembers Wilbur telling him. After the festival, in Pogtopia. Bandages in his hands and his eyes dark and lit with fire, helping Tubbo wrap around his chest and shoulder. <em>It won’t really stop hurting. It’ll just hurt less.</em>
</p>
<p>
Tubbo presses his fingers against his chest, feeling the empty ache of grief in his heart.
</p>
<p>
“You were right.” He whispers to the cold air, thinking of his dead brother’s voice as he told them he was proud. “It doesn’t stop hurting.” <em>To think about you,</em> he leaves unsaid. “It just hurts less.”
</p>
<p>
Nostalgia is the littlest grief. Every morning is a fresh log to the flames of mourning.
</p>
<p>
Tubbo never stopped grieving, and never will.
</p>
<p>
(He has no idea, after all, of a certain resurrection. He won’t let Dream fool him into being hopeful. He’s had enough of <em>hoping.</em> It’s never done Tubbo any good to hope.)
</p>
<p>
(Across a border unseen, Wilbur lifts his head and thinks of his second youngest brother with a hollow heart.
</p>
<p>
In a few days time, Wilbur lifts his head in a familiar body, blood dripping from his lips and determination in his bones as Phil helps him up, gathers him in a blanket and takes him to Techno’s house to see to the side effects of resurrecting someone long-dead. As they go, Wilbur thinks through the hazy fog of using a physical brain again, asking Phil questions that are stuttered awkwardly through unfamiliar yet familiar lips as he tries to remember how to exist as anything more than a shade of who he’d been.
</p>
<p>
Sam can take care of Tommy. Wilbur won’t fight him for that - Tommy doesn’t need Wilbur, not anymore, and not right now. Wilbur doesn’t want to see Tommy’s face fall when he realizes how broken Wilbur is, a body with an unbeating heart with a familiar face that struggles to recollect all of the pieces of himself. But… there’s someone else, too.
</p>
<p>
Someone just as young, and far more alone. Another brother. One who needs him, no matter the fact that Wilbur is still recovering.
</p>
<p>
Wilbur won’t see Tubbo fall like he did. Not over his dead now-living body.)
</p>
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